State Just Shrugs As Hurricanes Lurk

MIAMI — Had Hurricane Gilbert, the mightiest storm recorded in this hemisphere, hit Miami last year instead of northern Mexico, all of Florida would have felt its fury.

But no area would have suffered more than South Florida, where high tides and heavy rains would have destroyed at least $5 billion worth of property.

Many glass skyscrapers on Brickell Avenue, Miami's bayfront financial district, would be empty shells. Joe's Stone Crab, Miami Beach's landmark restaurant, would be flooded. Homes on Key Biscayne would be under water. Residents countywide would be without telephone, electrical or water service for weeks.

That grim picture was painted Wednesday by Kate Hale, director of Metro-Dade Emergency Management, on the opening day of the 11th annual National Hurricane Conference.

Hale's analysis of a hypothetical event was a rare departure from the traditional conference approach of studying actual experiences to improve hurricane preparedness, but the message, and the reason for doing it, was clear: This could happen and all of Florida and the rest of the nation had better be prepared.

In fact, William Gray, a leading hurricane researcher who has made near-perfect predictions about hurricane activity during the past four years, believes severe storms come in cycles and, after a relative drought starting in 1970, a new cycle may be on the horizon.

Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, can't say whether the 1988 hurricane season, which spawned three severe storms, is the beginning of that cycle but he said all coastal areas should plan as if it was.

''The probability of a major storm is very low,'' Gray admitted, ''but then so was the probability of an oil spill in Alaska. The potential for a $10 billion or $12 billion storm is there.''

Hurricanes are tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds exceeding 74 mph and are categorized by strength. Maximum Category 5 hurricanes, such as Gilbert, pack winds exceeding 155 mph and are rare. Only two other Category 5 hurricanes have struck the U.S. mainland this century: an unnamed storm that devastated the Keys in 1935 and Camille, which smashed into the Mississippi Gulf coast and killed more than 250 people in 1969.

But, like Gray, Hale cautioned that sooner or later an urban, coastal area such as Dade County will be the target of a severe storm.

If Gilbert had struck Miami and exited Florida through Tampa, Hale said, casualties would have been minimal because of early warning capabilities and extensive media coverage.

But property damage would be severe, no matter how much residents prepared. Little could be done to prevent wind and rain damage, the biggest threat to glass skyscrapers that have been built downtown and on Brickell Avenue this decade.

Although lab-tested to withstand winds of 120 mph, many windows would be shattered, if not from the winds, from fallen signs, shrubs and other debris. And once the windows are gone, winds and rain would batter the dry-walled interiors of many buildings, leaving nothing but a shell.

As if the property damage weren't enough, the cleanup process would be painstakingly slow, taking weeks to restore utilities and months to clear debris. The reason? Much of the rest of Florida would have taken such a battering from fierce winds, rains and dozens of tornados that cleanup crews would attend to their own regions first, Hale said.

With it being unreasonable to assume the 40 million people living near the water nationwide will move, Gray has a solution:

''My feeling is in vulnerable areas, the government should mandate hurricane insurance, have coastal residents pay into a fund that can be used to rebuild what some hurricane is going to tear down.''